James McAvoy gets physical in his new film and also gets beaten up nightly on stage. But it’s all part of the job, he tells Steve Pratt

IT’S surprising the things you find out interviewing actors. I now know from James McAvoy that his wife, the actress Anne- Marie Duff, does a good impression of Mohammed Ali. That he bought the Olympic torch he carried through the streets of Glasgow.

That Macbeth is the most physical role he’s ever done. And that he swears quite often.

He’s also difficult to avoid at the moment with three new films and his current stage play on view. Plus plugging the first of those movies to reach cinemas, Welcome To The Punch, in which his detective doggedly pursues an old criminal adversary when he returns to this country to deal with a family crisis.

Once again McAvoy abandons his Scottish brogue for an English accent. Does he, like Daniel Day-Lewis, stay in the accent both on and off the set while filming? “Could not be f***ing bothered,” he says.

“Listen, maybe if the accent was getting really dodgy, I would do it. I’ve done it in the US because American is so different. And you can tell it just relaxes the director and the producers.

They go ‘thank God he’s not making that funny noise any more’.”

And yes, before you ask, his accent has provoked such comments. “I did have a kid say that once. They asked their mother, what’s that funny noise coming out of that man’s mouth?’’ One word he doesn’t mind saying is Macbeth despite that old warning that saying the name is unlucky. “We don’t give a f***, we say Macbeth in the theatre,” he says.

The physicality of the approach means he’s getting beaten up on stage nightly. The bruises on his arm are there to see. “It’s all part of the job but more than I bargained for. I always wanted to do it very physically, very violently, but I’ve never been so physical on stage or on film.”

There are fights, shoot-outs and chases in Welcome To The Punch, but he didn’t bulk up greatly for the role. “Just a little bit, not for any aesthetic because I don’t get my top off or anything.

“Again, it’s not like doing a play. Macbeth is the most physical thing I’ve ever done, but rehearsals get you strong enough to be able to do the show.

“Whereas with a film you haven’t done any-thing for two days maybe, just sitting around in an office and then the third day of the week comes along and it’s ‘get hit by that car, roll, jump, tuck, shoot the guy and then punch him’. You’ve got to have a general level of strength in yourself and fitness, enough to be called upon to do something different every two minutes.

“But with Macbeth every single night, two and a half hours solid of just doing it – there’s no break – it’s nuts, man. So we’re all falling to pieces.”

Next he’ll be seen in Danny Boyle’s new film Trance (as someone who can’t remember where he’s hidden a stolen painting) and then Filth (taken from the novel by Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh).

Happily, he’s able to leave such difficult characters behind at the end of the day. “Generally I can, but doing theatre is harder for leaving it behind. I loved playing the character in Filth because he’s so mentally ill, so unhappy and so afraid of who he actually is, that he gets to live in his fantasy a little bit.

“He was just good fun to play and also in terms of the theatricality of it as well, the fact that I got to play someone so desperately unpleasant and unwell at the same time as trying to make the audience laugh and cry.”

Becoming a father – he and Duff had a son in 2000 – hasn’t changed the type of work he takes, although they try to take it in turns to work so one of them is around for the child. It certainly doesn’t seem to have stopped him working. Next is shooting the follow-up to X Men: First Class in which he plays the young Charles Xavier.

“Yeah, it’s fairly full-on, but I promise I’ll disappear again. X Men won’t be out until the summer of 2014 or 15 or whatever. I imagine we’ll be filming that until the end of the year, then take a wee holiday. Then start again in January 2014.”

Despite all the work, he’s picky about the parts he accepts and says it drives his agent crazy. “It is important to disappear. Partly because audiences get sick of you and also to allow you to time to grow so you don’t get caught doing the same thing again and again and again. I’ve been very lucky not to retrace my steps too much.”

  • Welcome To The Punch (15) is in cinemas now.